VGI-Analytics 2017 is the 4th workshop in a series of AGILE pre-conference workshops
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and social media data have become part of our everyday lives over the past few years. Whereas in the early beginnings of crowd-sourced data the collection occurred primarily to isolated, individual platforms, contribution patterns are now beginning to be more intertwined between different platforms, both at the application level and at the user side. This means that crowd-sourcing applications nowadays begin to offer opportunities to share data between them during data collection and contribution processes, for example, by tweeting an Instagram image or by viewing a Mapillary image layer while editing OpenStreetMap data.

This advancement on the application side can lead to novel analysis methods of user contribution patterns. Recent data contribution trends show also that geographic data are beginning to be linked across different VGI and social media platforms. As an example, users started to cross-link OSM point of interests (POIs) and street features (e.g. street lamps, sidewalk information) based on Mapillary photographs, or by tagging Flickr pictures with OSM tags to facilitate automatic extraction of descriptive information for Flickr images. This cross-linkage of data between different platforms brings new opportunities and challenges, including questions of data quality and the formation of user communities across platforms. This change in contribution patterns may require different analysis techniques than for data contributed to individual data platforms. The number of VGI and social media platforms is continuously growing, providing new data sets to be analysed. A recent example is the Pokémon Go application which triggered the crowd-sourced local business review Website “Yelp” to add a Pokémon stop attribute. This attribute can reveal in which parts of a city Pokémon stops are placed and thus where Pokémon Go players explore Pokémon stops.

This workshop provides an opportunity for interested researchers to share ideas and findings on cross-platform data contributions, innovative analysis approaches, current data fusion methods, real-world applications using cross-linked data, and novel crowd-sourcing and social media platforms. It allows participants also to discuss technical questions and innovations on data access. One portion in the workshop is dedicated to a collaborative session, where break-out groups will discuss some specific aspects of cross-linked VGI data. Concurrently we plan to offer a technical hands-on session on VGI related APIs and software as well.

The Call for Papers will include a call for free open access journal paper submissions which will reviewed and considered for inclusion in a special issue of the journal Geo-spatial Information Science http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/est/gsis in late 2017.

GSIS is now an Open Access journal! All article publishing charges (APC) will be covered by Wuhan University (unless otherwise stated), so authors will have the benefits of open access at no cost.

Quality assessment of VGI/social media data through analysis of data from different platforms

Analysis of cross-linked data and cross-link editing methods in VGI and social media platforms and its applications

New sources of VGI and social media data

VGI across different regions and cultures

Semantic issues arising from the conflation or cross-linkage of several different sources of VGI

Tailoring VGI for different applications

VGI-Analytics 2017: Important Dates

Dec 21st 2016: Call for short workshop papers and full journal papers opens. This call is different to the AGILE 2017 call for short papers.

Mar 15 2017: Call for short workshop papers and full journal papers ends. In the coming weeks we will update this website with information on how both the short workshop papers and full journal papers will be submitted.

Apr 4 2017: Review process ends. Program committee decides on which workshop papers are accepted. The authors of these papers are notified and invited to present their work at VGI-Analytics 2017 workshop.
The status of the submitted journal papers will also be communicated to authors (accepted/revisions required/rejected). There will be an invitation of authors of journal papers of sufficient quality to present and take part in the workshop;

Apr 21 2017: Camera ready copies of workshop papers due; journal paper authors can prepare an abstract of their journal paper for the workshop Website (but don’t need to have their journal paper ready at that time). It should be noted that all outputs from the workshop will be openly available on the VGI-Analytics 2017 workshop website.

VGI-Analytics follows on from a very successful pre-AGILE conference workshop in Helsinki in June 2016 called Link-VGI: LINKing and analyzing Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) across different platforms. Please see the workshop web-page for LinkVGI 2016. Indeed the workshop organisers have been working together in this general research areas for several years now. In 2015 the RICH-VGI workshop (enRICHment of volunteered geographic information (VGI): Techniques, practices and current state of knowledge) was organised before AGILE 2015 in Lisbon, Portugal. An earlier pre-AGILE conference workshop ACTIVITY (Action and Interaction in Volunteered Geographic Information) was held in Leuven in May 2013 before AGILE 2013.

VGI-Analytics 2017: Workshop Timetable
The workshop will be a full day workshop. We intend to begin at 09:00 and finish at around 17:00. This will allow workshop delegates to either return back to their accommodation before the evening reception or to explore the university grounds or city of Wageningen. In the tentative outline below we have provided two options for parallel sessions in the afternoon. We aim to attract a high number of attendees and consequently we believe that we can provide the option of both sessions.

The tentative outline of the workshop is as follows below. The timings have been designed so that they work with the timetables of the other pre AGILE workshops for the purposes of coffee breaks and lunches.

09:00 – 09:30
Welcome and some introductions from the organisers

09:30 – 12:30
Presentations and lectures from delegates – these will be drawn from submissions to the workshop after a Call For Papers process

12:30 – 13:30
LUNCH

13:30 – 15:30Session Option 1 Collaborative Session the idea here would be to break the workshop up into 4 – 5 small groups. Each group would be led by one of the organisers or an experienced academic/researcher. Then each group would try to tackle some of the current challenges in VGI-Analytics with the view of working towards the draft for a multi-author journal paper. At the end of the session each group will have gathered together a roughwork document of ideas, formulations, plans, etc to bring their paper forward after the workshop. Very often one of the negative aspects of workshops is that the potential energy for collaboration and future networking diminishes after the workshop is finished. A tangible and shared collaborative output like this could help build capacity for sustaining this collaboration. This is also an excellent opportunity for PhD students and other young researchers to work and collaborate with more experienced academics/researchers.

15:30 – 16:00
Coffee

16:00 – 16:30
Short feedback and summary from each group leader

16:30 – 17:00
Closing – summary and overview of the day from the Workshop Chair. Plans for the future.

The AGILE 2017 website will contain information and directions of how to travel to Wageningen University.

REGISTRATION for the VGI-Analytics 2017 will be handled directly with your registration for the AGILE 2017 conference. This webpage will not provide a facility to register for the workshop. There will be a small registration fee for this workshop which is collected by AGILE.